Today, four State Department senior leaders resigned from their positions. The senior State Department leaders were reportedly asked to leave via letter in what is believed to be an effort to “clean house” at the department.

While the officials technically resigned, the real decision was for the Trump Administration to accept what are pro forma resignations at the beginning of any administration.

Also among those not asked to return to service was highly controversial Assistant Secretary for Europe Victoria Nuland, who seemed to work tirelessly to damage US relations with Russia. Nuland openly supported a coup in Ukraine, handing out bread to protesters, as well as working behind the scenes to form the post-coup government.

By “cleaning house” at the State Department, President Trump is going to be able to exert even more influence in shaping the department for years to come.

Another agency at which Trump could “clean house” is the CIA, which appeared to be a source of leaks in opposition to the president in the run up to his inauguration. Former CIA Director John Brennan openly feuded with Trump and has attacked him even after Trump assumed office.

Kiriakou, who personally knew John Brennan when at CIA, explained how President Barack Obama’s intelligence team came to be and some of the institutional changes Brennan made at the CIA. Brennan may have been a mediocre to poor intelligence official, but he was great at politics and was able to maneuver behind the scenes to get to the top.

But, as Kiriakou notes, Brennan’s legacy is likely to come under assault by President Trump and now-CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Trump’s foreign policy vision is fundamentally at odds with the one pursued under Obama, and the CIA will need to be changed to fit the new nationalist realism of the Trump Administration.

National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, the target of one of the recent intelligence leaks and former head of the rival Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), appears to be more than happy to help Trump reshape the CIA in his image.

And, of course, one of the ways to ensure an organization takes a new path is to insert new leaders into it. That, correspondingly, requires old leaders to go. So, if President Trump’s State Department purge is any indication, expect him to clean house at the CIA too.

The recent devastating car bombing in Mogadishu has been blamed by Somali officials on the terrorist group al-Shabab. But the violence (and famine) that have beset Somalia have deeper roots — decades of imperialism and intervention, and use of Somalia as a staging grounds for the “war on terror.”

Buried among statistics on gun profits and lobbying efforts is the terrifying reality of just how unique America’s gun obsession and associated violence are. And the equally terrifying plan by the NRA to “normalize” gun possession in nearly every nook and cranny of American life.

U.S. campaigns for regime change characteristically focus on the “madness” of the “dictators” to be toppled. In the case of North Korea, the narrative is spiced by the country’s developing nuclear capabilities — which North Korea views as its main line of defense against . . . regime change.

Aung Su Kyi, the leader of Myanmar, has been accused of “legitimizing genocide” against the country’s Rohingya Muslims, despite being a Nobel Prize laureate. Her country’s military has massacred thousands of Rohingya, leading some to call for Kyi’s Nobel Prize to be revoked.